


Heroes for Ghosts

by Redrikki



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Gen, Ghosts, Kidnapping, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-28 20:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18763501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redrikki/pseuds/Redrikki
Summary: Eudora waits for Diego and things go very differently.





	Heroes for Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alessandriana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandriana/gifts).



> Thanks to [chancecraz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chancecraz/pseuds/chancecraz) for the beta.

It felt like they’d been waiting hours for a rescue that wasn’t coming: Klaus tied to the stupid chair and his kidnappers plotting in the bathroom. The ghosts crowded in like Klaus wasn’t just as helpless as they were. He couldn’t even speak for them anymore what with the tape over his mouth. What did they want from his life? Didn’t they realize he’d be joining them as soon as these psychos got bored of waiting for Five to not show up?

A pair of shadows made their way down the hall on the other side of the curtains and Klaus’s heart leapt. People! People who could do something! They were probably just a hooker and her john, but he could hope, right? They might call the cops. It could happen. 

Klaus called out to them like an idiot, but of course they couldn’t hear him with the damn tape over his mouth. Shit! There had to be another way to catch their attention. After a moment’s hesitation, he slammed his head against the table. It was already pounding from the withdrawal, beatings, and dehydration, but he couldn’t just let the shadows leave. Adapt to overcome. Isn’t that what dear old Dad had always said? He banged his head again. Once. Twice. Three times. His ears rang.

“The foot steps, they stopped!” Ben shouted, excited. “Do it again, Klaus. Do it again!”

Klaus managed two more good bangs before he had to stop. He couldn’t. He was done. So much for overcoming. He could barely see straight and what was the point? No one was coming to save him. No one ever had.

The door creaked open. Klaus turned his aching head to see Diego and some lady with a gun in her hand and a badge around her neck framed in the doorway like heroes in an action film. 

“Jesus, Klaus!” Diego rushed to his side, cupping his face in his hands before Klaus could even begin to process. This was real. This was happening. His brother had come to rescue him. He felt almost giddy with relief, or possibly the concussion. Diego started sawing through the tape on his left wrist. Klaus had never loved his brother as much as he did in that moment. 

“I knew they’d come,” Ben lied, looking almost relieved as Klaus felt. Maybe he wasn’t even lying. Ben never gotten the chance to grow out of thinking the best of their siblings, but, holy shit, maybe he’d been right not to. 

The lady cop stood guard over them as Diego worked, her gun up at the ready. “Are they still here?” she asked in a whisper. 

Klaus nodded frantically, jerking his head back towards the bathroom. Did they know there were two of them? He thought Diego had still been around when Hazel and Cha-Cha grabbed him from the house, but he couldn’t be sure. Diego and his friend had to know they were walking into a trap, but they didn’t have a clue just how dangerous these psychos were. The last strands of tape holding his wrist to the chair parted. He pawed frantically at the gag, but his fingers were too numb to pull it off. He groaned in frustration. 

Diego made quick work of the tape on his right wrist and hauled him up on legs that felt like overcooked noodles. He had the worse case of pins and needles. It was all he could do to hold up the towel around his waist without falling on his face.

“Get him out of here,” the cop-lady hissed and of course that’s when the bullets started flying.

Klaus flinched as one shattered the window behind him and then he was on the floor with Diego on top of him. Shielding him. Protecting him. Holding him down. Klaus bucked against him out of sheer reflex before forcing himself to relax. He was safe. He was safe. _He was safe_. Diego was keeping him safe. 

“Police!” the cop shouted, returning fire. “Drop your gun or you’re going down.”

There was a thump by the bathroom as someone followed her order. Then Hazel said, “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot.” 

It was so obviously a trap, but Diego let him up anyway. Peering over the bed, he could see Hazel on his knees by the bathroom door, but where the hell was Cha-Cha? Klaus pawed at the gag again to warn them, but then his gaze snagged on his coat. They couldn’t have gotten all his drugs, right? There had to be stray pill stuck in a pocket somewhere. Klaus licked his lips and squirmed in Diego’s grasp. Just a few more inches and he could reach it and be numb again. 

“Hands behind your head, asshole,” the cop ordered. There was a slight tremor in her voice, but her hands were steady. “Diego, cover me,” she added, reaching for her handcuffs. 

Diego climbed off him to back her up like they did this all the time. Who knew, maybe they did. Every Batman needed a Commissioner Gordon. Whatever. Good for them; he had better things to worry about. Klaus snatched his coat and started digging through the pockets. There had to be drugs in here somewhere.

“Seriously, Klaus?” Ben asked incredulously like he’d somehow missed the fact that Klaus was an addict. “I can’t believe you’re thinking of drugs at a time like—-Diego!”

Klaus whirled to see Cha-Cha in the doorway behind his brother, lining up her shot. He dropped his coat and lunged for Diego. The gun went off as he collided with his brother’s legs. Diego hit the floor with a yelp, his blood spattering across Klaus’s face.

The cop spun, firing two quick shots into the hallway. Glass shattered. Cha-Cha squeezed off one more wild shot as she fell. 

“Look out!” Ben shouted uselessly as Hazel went for his gun. 

Klaus barely had time to brace himself before Diego threw his knife, catching Hazel in the chest. Thank god he was alright. The last thing Klaus needed as another ghost brother.

Klaus exhaled shakily. Just like that, both his kidnappers were down. Not dead, but definitely out. They both lay groaning on the floor and the ghosts were going wild. It was like feeding time at the zoo as the ghosts crowded in above them, just waiting to tear them apart. He could swear he actually saw one of them draw blood, clawing at Hazel’s face. Klaus panted frantically behind the gag. He needed to get out of this room before he lost his mind. He needed to get out _right now_.

Luckily, the cop had the same idea. “Can you stand?” she asked. Before he could answer, she hauled him up on legs that felt no stronger than when Diego had tried it before. “You alright, Diego?”

“Peachy,” Diego said, climbing to his feet. Wincing, he pressed his hand against the hole in his left arm. “Just a flesh wound,” he insisted, all macho like he wasn’t two shades paler than normal. He slung Klaus’s arm across his shoulder. “Come on, bro, let’s get out of here.”

Klaus looked longingly back at his coat as his rescuers maneuvered him out the door. The hallway was littered with glass and didn’t that just feel great on his bare feet. Cha-Cha moaned softly as they stepped over her. The cop’s bullet had hit her in the shoulder and it looked like her clavicle was broken. Couldn’t happen to a nicer assassin. Good old Zoya Popova leaned over her and ranted at her in Russian. Sirens wailed a counterpoint in the background and they could not get out of here fast enough. 

“Shit! Someone called the cops.”

“Diego, I am a cop,” she said sounding exasperated.

“Yeah, and do you really want to explain to the rest of them what you were doing here? Face it, Eudora. You’re a vigilante now.” 

She hesitated, looking from the approaching cop cars to the wounded assassin and back again. “Shit!” she yelled and then started dragging Klaus down the stairs so fast he could barely keep up. They gunned it out of the parking lot in her Crown Vic, just as two other police cars pulled in.

Klaus leaned back in his seat and pealed off the tape with shaking hands. Chunks of his facial hair came with it. It would be weeks before his mustache recovered. It might take him awhile too, but what was a little torture between friends? He was alive, Diego was alive next to him, and Ben was dead in the front passenger seat. After the day he’d had, he could hardly ask for more.


End file.
